Imaginaries and Conventions in Commensuration Work: The Financial Valuation of Social Values in Socially Sustainable Investing

This paper studies the commensuration work that serves as foundation for the operation of socially sustainable investing (SSI), a global field of financial activity entailing the systematic inclusion of extra-financial factors related to particular social values into investment practices and products. We probe the imaginaries and conventions that constitute SSI as a field, focusing on the ways in which they define the rules of valuation through which extra-financial factors are financially valued. At the conceptual level, we consider SSI as a field that is constituted by the explicit interweaving between two orders of worth, which are usually understood in society as belonging to separate spheres of life: the civic order of worth and the market order of worth. Thus, there is, in principle, a condition of incommensurability between the two orders of worth that brings about evaluative uncertainty. We postulate that the operation of SSI is dependent upon the achievement of commensurability between the two orders of worth by institutional actors who formulate imaginaries and conventions that shape the field’s contours and mode of operation.

At the empirical level, we examine the imaginaries and conventions formulated and communicated by Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), an international multilateral organization that plays a central role in the development of the SSI market, especially by formulating and promoting principles, practical blueprints and tools. Established in 2006, the PRI is an association of institutions in the financial industry with more than 5,300 signatories from all over the world. We analyze an extensive array of documents and reports produced by PRI, focusing on the repertoires of notions, categories, and causal and prescriptive models inscribed in the texts. The analysis sheds light on the ways in which institutional actors conduct commensuration work between different orders of worth through the formulation and communication of imaginaries and conventions.